


The Valley of Willows

by the_glow_worm



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Angst, Brief mention of period-typical sexism, Letters, Longing, M/M, Mentions of Character Death, Post-Canon, Sad Ending, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-02-23 07:10:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23607601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_glow_worm/pseuds/the_glow_worm
Summary: Imprisoned in St. Helena, surrounded by gaolers and spies, Napoleon dreams of William Laurence.
Relationships: Napoleon Bonaparte/William Laurence
Comments: 16
Kudos: 57





	The Valley of Willows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Beware_The_Ravenstag](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beware_The_Ravenstag/gifts).



There had never been a more desolate sight, to Napoleon’s eyes, than the barren and rocky shore before him, pitifully devoid of all life and promise, but in the end he was grateful to watch the British ship disappear into the distance. He had been growing tired of the interminable whispers and stares on board, the strange mixture of triumph and fear and pity in their looks, and their tedious attempts to treat him as the Emperor he had been, offering him the best stateroom and the finest wine at dinner, all the while taking him to his prison. He was a soldier: he could stand an honest gaol.

He would have given much, however, for a less honest gaoler. Monsieur Lowe was a stupid man, petty and dull, who seemingly existed to pinch in the corners of his existence. Napoleon could not even walk the grounds of the cold, run-down house he had been provided without seeing a dull-faced guard shadowing him. It did not rob him of the pleasure of the walk: there was no pleasure to it, save that it was preferable to the peeling green wallpaper in Longwood House, and the indoors and out, in this case, equally windswept and cold.

He had been colder than this. He had experienced that most implacable of enemies, the Russian winter, just as his men had, just as William Laurence, sleeping on the wrong side of the battle lines, had. He did not mind the discomfort, much, but he did mind the indignity. 

The greatest of indignities was this: every two days, if neither he nor his attendants had made too many demands, or gave the guards any reason for alarm, he was allowed to speak with Lien, for half-an-hour at a time, from a distance of fifty feet, surrounded by soldiers.

There was no privacy, no chance to caress her soft nose or take shelter within her vast white wings. If they had hoped the many listening ears deterred Lien, they were disappointed; she made no secret of her vast disdain for them, and for their prison, speaking often in English specifically for their benefit.

If his lodgings were inadequate, hers were scarcely worth speaking of: not what was due the companion of a prince and an Emperor. Yet Napoleon would not for anything have offered her an apology. She had thrown in her fate with his, as boldly as he himself would have done, and he would not ask her to regret. They were the same type of creature: a bird that could not land, but could only fly recklessly on. God forbid that his imprisonment should break her pride. 

Night was some consolation. He often dreamed that he was walking in the gardens at Fontainebleau, and that William Laurence was at his side.

* * *

He wrote, scribbling in the margins of the books that were sent to him, furious annotations, corrections, unrelated thoughts that had suddenly seized him. He wrote letters to Lien, which he was able to have read to her by his secretary, who would then take down her reply: in this way they were able to extend their conversations well beyond their short times together. He finished writing a biography of the great Caesar, his predecessor, and began a memoir. His pen stopped midway, realizing he did not know how to finish it. On the page he had just received the cure for the dragon plague.

He read. He was only allowed English papers; he scanned through them for any mention of William Laurence’s name, and threw them into the fire otherwise. He burned through the store of Classics again and again, until his retinue began to tire of hearing them. His retinue was growing tired of _him_ , he was sure. He tore apart the letters from his wife in mad rages, and then painstakingly pieced them back together: he did love her once, and after all one must expect betrayal from women. They contained no apology, but something better: news of his son and heir, born the King of Rome, and hereafter Emperor of the French. 

Lien listened carefully to the news of little Napoleon, and concluded that it was most propitious: he could walk as sturdily as a little soldier, and could already say "God bless and keep you" perfectly in French and Quechua, along with other, equally delightful phrases, and despite his tender age. Nothing could have been more wonderful. Napoleon could not stop boasting of him, to the dull English guards, to the startled servants, to the doctor who attended him only to spy on him for Lowe.

Pages and pages went back to France, for his son to read when he was older. He had had time to write it all. He had little other correspondence. God knew that loyalty was not worth a sou in Paris; that did not surprise him. Yet he had to confess: there was one person who he had hoped to hear from. 

“Yes, I am indeed surprised that neither he nor his uncivilized companion have come to gloat over us,” said Lien, with distant contempt. “At least _he_ shows he can show some respect to his superiors: that soldier has no rank of his own, that he should dare to approach you without having been solicited.”

Napoleon considered this. He was not at ease with the idea that Laurence was drawing back from him out of respect for his crown; the opposite was perhaps more likely, but also not a consolation.

It was clear to him now more than ever that everything could have been different had he been able to keep Laurence by his side. He ought never to have let him leave it to begin with. He should have chained Laurence to him wrist to wrist, locked him away in his palaces, heaped him down with fine cloth and silver until he could not move to run away from him. He wished he could have been the tyrant his enemies believed him to be, and then even if the world had turned its face away from him, he would have Laurence.

But that was not what Napoleon had wanted. He had wanted Laurence to choose him, not only at their first meeting in France, but thereafter. He had looked for him in England, sure that he would find him around every corner in London. But he had been as a ghost, a thief; always just out of reach. He had known he would have to take ship to the Incan Empire as soon as he had heard that Will Laurence was being sent to Brazil; he had felt in his heart that they had been destined to meet there, and they had. They had met again in Russia, and in France, but each time he found Laurence more and more determined to be his enemy. Somehow they had been set down these paths long ago, with nothing Napoleon could say or do to change it. He was not accustomed to this feeling, almost of helplessness. Somehow there was nothing within his power to make Laurence come to him willingly. By the time they had met for the final time in Germany, the lines had been set. Napoleon could remember the battle clearly: Lien’s last, despairing roar, the mad rush of wings and the sky spinning above him, and then one strangely clear glimpse of Laurence’s face just before he was forced to surrender.

There was a certain satisfaction that came of knowing that only the finest of British officers could have defeated him. Wellesley, he was sure, could not have outmaneuvered him so in open combat. There was that consolation in defeat; but that was nothing to how sweet victory would have been with Laurence by his side.

* * *

In the end Napoleon wrote the first letter.

Lien had been right. He was certain that Laurence had not written to him out of a desire not to impose. It was now the end of two full years in St. Helena. He had heard twice more in letters of his son. He sometimes walked to the seawall to scan the ocean for any sign of an approaching ship, which might have a letter for him, but he soon grew to detest the sight of the empty ocean, as well as the insolence of the guards which constantly followed him and refused to address him as the Emperor.

The worst of them all was Lowe. He appeared at his door one day, full of insolence and demands. It was true, that Napoleon had written his friends with complaints of his confinement, and the disrespect given to him; it was nothing that he would not have said to Lowe's face, however, and he often had in the past. To demand that Napoleon retract his complaints was bad enough, but to demand that he write and confess his wrongdoings, so-called, to the world! Nothing less was asked for than a public admittance that he had had no right to seek glory for France, to hold in his heart a vision for a united Europe, to make his empire prosperous and free! An apology to the fat, corrupt Bourbon kings, a validation of the rights of those weak monarchs of Europe, who had not had the power to keep their crowns. No! Napoleon rejected it with all the contempt it deserved, and for a while afterwards there was blessed silence from Lowe, although the insolence of his guards continued.

There was a certain valley that he found charming, and on days when he could face the world outside Longwood House he walked there, and the burble of the busy stream that wended through the willows allowed him to forget, for a while, his imprisonment. It was there that he mentally drafted his letters to Laurence. 

In his mind he was stern, perhaps even angry, and then by turns cajoling, passionate, eloquent. He would win Laurence over with words, as he had seduced so many others: yet that wasn't right, either. Laurence was in a class apart from the others. Napoleon could only approach him as his equal.

In his mind he read a thousand replies. Laurence was straightforward, flirtatious, reticent, coy; sometimes he begged forgiveness for not writing sooner, sometimes he was angry at Napoleon for having made him wait. Sometimes Laurence wrote only to throw himself at Napoleon's feet, and those were the ones he liked best. He dreamed that Laurence might visit. Lien would not like it in the least, but they two might walk down into the valley together, and sit by the stream. There was a place that Napoleon had grown particularly fond of, where two willows had grown intertwined, and there they might talk face to face, as was the right of lovers.

Another year had gone by before he set pen to paper. Such hesitance was unlike him. He had never gone so long standing still. For the first time, he could feel the earth moving around him, rather than waiting for him to move. When he had marched for Russia, it had been against the counsel of all his advisors. He had mocked them for cowards, and he had been right to. Defeat was nothing to fear, and neither was death; it was only the wasting of the moment that Napoleon could not stand. He had always had that exquisite sense of time passing, keener perhaps than his fellow mortals. He had not wanted to waste those endless months of the Russian winter. Now he had nothing but time. It was the only abundant resource on this island of St. Helena; time, and solitude. 

There had begun to be a little pain in his stomach, nothing he would complain of to his doctor, the second assigned to him. Napoleon assumed the first had not spied on him well enough to suit Lowe, but it was all alike to him. He thought of Lowe as little as possible. He did think sometimes of the great Caesar, who had once, like him, been held prisoner; when he was freed, he had raised a fleet and had his kidnappers crucified. As a young man Napoleon had found this thrilling, inspiring. Napoleon was not a young man anymore. He was never to leave his prison, and Lowe would long outlive him. He could only take anger as it came. Lowe could try to make him forget it, with his demands and his insolence and his uncreative indignities, but Napoleon knew who he was. He would sell the Imperial silver to buy firewood, as Lowe demanded, he would keep himself enclosed in damp, verminous Longwood House, to avoid Lowe’s indignities, but he would not stop being Napoleon. He had once brought Europe to her knees, and he did not repent of it.

In the end, after all of his thinking and rethinking, he wrote the letter in a single rush of fevered inspiration. Words had always come easily for him, had always been his most faithful servants; he was sure, re-reading what he had written, that they had not failed him now. 

The letter was short, only one page front and back. That was no matter: Napoleon was certain that their correspondence to come must be long.

_Do not, dear William, mistake my long silence for indifference, for my every waking thought has been of you. My heart is in my hand as it writes these words. You alone can tell me how to go on, whether as a rejected suitor, or, more painful and more happy, a lover who could not be further from your arms. The logic of the match is against us. We are sundered by a 1000 leagues and more of water, and where you must belong to England, I must belong to France. Therefore do not let logic be your guide. Write to me and say you will make me happy. I shall live every day like a year until I have heard from you._

_You are astonished. Do not be. Your glances and your manner have shown me that I might work upon your heart as you have already worked upon mine. How I long to see you! How I long to hold you! You ought to have been mine since the first we met, and I curse that which came between us. I hate the hand that must pass this letter to you, for it will be closer to you than I can be. Only you can offer an antidote to this terrible loneliness. I am more tired here than any war could have made me. I have no refreshment but thoughts of you. I am lost often in remembrances of when we were together. You imagine I speak of Fontainebleu. I must admit that I think far more fondly of the hour we spent in that cottage in Reichenbach, where we spoke of nothing more than troop movements and aerial stratagems. Charming William, I tell myself I must have won your heart in that hour, if in any._

_What I can do from my prison to gladden your heart, I will do. You will be drowned in my letters, I will flood you with words of tenderness. I forbid you therefore to be unhappy, if only you will write to me._

_It is an hour after midnight as I write this. I cannot sleep for thoughts of you, and yet sleep is my solace. I go now to my bed, where I will dream of you. Fickle William! You join me in slumber, but you will not stay past morning._

_You must write me pages and pages. You must forgive me my silence, as I forgive you yours. Did you know from the beginning that my heart would wait for you?_

_—NB_

It was sent by the next morning’s post.

Now there was nothing but to wait, and wait, for an answer. This was what he had feared, after all; the anxiety of silence. As long as he had not yet written, all the power was on his side, but now he was solely in Laurence's power.

He had been walking in his valley the morning that the reply came. He could see the reflection of the two willows in the water, their branches intermingling like the hands of two lovers. Soon, he thought, soon, soon, that reflection could show himself and Laurence, if only Laurence wished it. He was sure that Laurence did wish it; he knew it, in fact, but it did not stop him from agonizing over the answer.

The letter was waiting on his desk when Napoleon arrived back at Longwood House. It puzzled him; he had heard nothing of a ship that morning, nor a dragon-courier. That thought quickly vanished from his mind. Eagerly he tore it open. He realized with a start that he did not know Laurence’s handwriting; the letter he had received from him at Fontainebleu had been read out loud to him by one of his secretaries. He had regretted not looking at it then, and now he stopped for a moment to savor seeing the choppy, square handwriting that wrote out _Napoleon Bonaporte_ on the outer fold. Then, eager for the words within, he read on.

_I have presumed from the tone of Your Majesty’s letter that it is meant to be private, and I will keep it so. I must admit to great Surprise as I read it. I had heard that Your Majesty had been changed by imprisonment. You must be greatly changed indeed to think that I might be won over by your words._

_You always had the power to remove that obstacle that stood between us. It was your Tyranny, and your hunger for ever-lasting war, that would have kept me from ever accepting you. There is much in your letter on Desire, but nothing on that which would have more power to work on me, Regret._

_Only your Confession of absolute Guilt, and a plea for Forgiveness from men and God, will induce me to write to you again._

_Sir William Laurence_

Napoleon stood very still. The letter was still in his hand. He set it down on the table, but he could not stop looking at it. He turned it over. The blank back page taunted him.

Laurence would not have written this. He was certain that he had not written this. Laurence had put him into this prison, had been his enemy and his vanquisher, but he would not have done _this_ to him, not like this, never like this. He would not have been so cruel to him. Laurence loved him. He was sure of it.

But how could he be sure? How could he possibly know these things of Laurence, when they had met scarcely half a dozen times? Napoleon wracked his memory. He had known what Laurence would be to him from the first moment they met. Every subsequent meeting had only been proof of it. And he had from Laurence such tokens as lovers give; looks, and certain words and phrases, and a feeling, indefinable, of affinity. He had risked his own life to save Napoleon’s son, and he had brought him the dragon cure. Such evidence had seemed irrefutable before now. Suddenly they seemed wholly inadequate. Laurence had done nothing for him that he would not have done for the lowest of his enemies.

Napoleon was crushed suddenly by the realization that Laurence had given him, after all, nothing. _He_ had shown his gratitude, his affection, in a thousand different ways, and only imagined that Laurence had been grateful and affectionate in return. He had dreamed it all, just as he had dreamed of victory in Russia, just as he had dreamed of a united Europe to pass onto his son. What could an expression have meant, against all that lay between them? What word, or phrase, or tone in which they were spoken, could Napoleon have brought forth before the entire world to prove that he was loved? He had built a foundation of hope on the mere memory of a longing glance. It could have meant anything. After all, how well had he known Laurence, truly? He had thought he had known Anahuarque. He had been sure that she, too, loved him. 

Napoleon sat alone with his thoughts for some time. For the first time he was grateful that he would not be seeing Lien that day; he did not think he could face her.

Finally he folded the letter carefully into his pocket, and walked out the door of Longwood House. He saw a guard, distantly, begin to shadow him, but he was beyond caring for that. The guard would keep his distance; no one would see the letter.

He walked down to the gentle valley where the two willows clung to each other. He stood alone on the bank, looking down at the water. The only reflection he could see was his own. His hand, which had been steady as he had signed his own abdication, shook slightly as he held the letter out over the water. For a moment he thought better of it. He could answer the letter without pride, without anger; he could win Laurence over with humility and regret and an open heart. For a moment he envisioned it—living in his prison with his heart beneath another’s heel. It was an intolerable vision. He could not live like that. It was not in the way he was formed. And yet he longed for that happiness with his entire body, with a ferocity that frightened him, as little else in his life had. It was that fear that made him open his hand. The letter fluttered into the stream and was caught on its current, and was gone before he could even each for it. Napoleon, once conqueror of Europe, was crowned only by the settling sun as he stood on that lonely streambank, his eyes on the straggling white letter as the stream carried it onwards, without mercy, into the unforgiving sea.

* * *

In London, several years on, Laurence received word of the death of Napoleon, once Emperor of the French, once his enemy. It touched him strangely; he found that he actually had to sit down. He looked down at his hands as he breathed. He had always stood against Napoleon and all he represented, but he could not deny the respect and even admiration he held for him, at the end. Even before they had faced each other on the battlefields of Prussia, there had been that draw between them, like a string from Napoleon’s hand to Laurence’s chest.

With exile, as the reasons for enmity were put behind them, he had hoped that they might be friends. Friends of a sort, at least: Laurence had not known if friendship was what he had wanted from Napoleon. He still did not know. His heart was a sea-knot swollen with salt, each thread too painful to pull upon. 

He had written, early on; a tentative letter full of pleasing nothings, not wishing to commit too much to paper when he must be so uncertain of the reply. He had hoped it might be the beginning of a correspondence, or perhaps even visits, if that could be allowed. Laurence had hoped for a while to relieve Napoleon of the misery of St. Helena. But that was evidently not to be. The Emperor did not want him. He had written again, thinking that the letter might have been lost at sea, and entrusted it to a private dragon-courier. After years of silence, however, Laurence had refused to torture himself any further. He had stopped writing; Napoleon had evidently made up his mind, without even the courtesy to tell him direct.

Laurence had never received any word from him at all.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Napoleon was buried in that valley of the willows in St. Helena, and his body remained there until it was repatriated to his beloved Paris, and entombed along the banks of the Seine.


End file.
